RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

Well, the U.S grid infrastructure has some of the same issues as India's system....

The largest blackout in world history happened today in India... this is nearly 10% of the entire world population without power (twice the number of people living in the U.S.)... could happen here in the U.S. at any time.

Are you prepared?

Quote:620 million without power in India after 3 power grids fail

NEW DELHI (AP) – Electric crematoria were snuffed out with bodies inside, New Delhi's Metro shut down and hundreds of coal miners were trapped underground after three Indian electric grids collapsed in a cascade Tuesday, cutting power to 620 million people in the world's biggest blackout.

While Indians were furious and embarrassed, many took the crisis in stride, inured by the constant — though far less widespread — outages triggered by the huge electricity deficit stymieing the development of this would-be Asian power.

Hospitals, factories and the airports switched automatically to their diesel generators during the hours-long cut across half of India. Many homes relied on backup systems powered by truck batteries. And hundreds of millions of India's poorest had no electricity to lose.

"The blackout might have been huge, but it wasn't unbearably long," said Satish, the owner of a coffee and juice shop in central Delhi who uses only one name. "It was just as bad as any other five-hour power cut. We just used a generator while the light was out, and it was work as usual."

The crisis was the second record-breaking outage in two days. India's northern grid failed Monday, leaving 370 million people powerless for much of the day, in a collapse blamed on states that drew more than their allotment of power.

At 1:05 p.m. Tuesday, the northern grid collapsed again, energy officials said. This time, it took the eastern grid and the northeastern grid with it. In all, 20 of India's 28 states — with double the population of the United States— were hit in a region stretching from the border with Myanmar in the northeast to the Pakistani border about 3,000 kilometers (1,870 miles) away.

Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread jams in New Delhi. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked office workers to go home and rushed generators to coal mines to rescue trapped miners.

Sahiba Narang, 17, was taking the Metro home because school bus drivers were on strike, "but this power failure's messed up everything."

S.K. Jain said he was on his way to file his income tax return when the Metro closed. The 54-year-old held his head, distraught that he would almost certainly miss the deadline. Hours later, the government announced it was giving taxpayers an extra month to file because of the chaos.

By evening, power had been restored to New Delhi and the remote northeast, and much of the northern and eastern grids were back on line. Electricity officials said the system would not be back to 100 percent until Wednesday.

Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said the new crisis had the same root as Monday's collapse.

"Everyone overdraws from the grid. Just this morning I held a meeting with power officials from the states and I gave directions that states that overdraw should be punished. We have given instructions that their power supply could be cut," he said.

But others were skeptical of Shinde's explanation, saying that if overdrawing power from the grid caused this kind of collapse, it would happen all the time.

"I just can't believe that there is no system in place to check whether the states are drawing more than their limit or not," said Samiran Chakraborty, head of research at Standard Chartered, a financial services company. "There has to be a much more technical answer to that question."

At a contentious news conference, R.N. Nayak, chairman of Power Grid Corp., which runs the nation's power system, said his staff was searching for the cause of the problem and pleaded for patience.

"We have been running this grid for decades. … Please trust us," he said.

The blackouts came amid consumer anger with the recent increase in power fees, including a 26 percent hike in Delhi, that government officials said were needed to pay for the steep rise in fuel costs.

The Confederation of Indian Industry said the two outages cost business hundreds of millions of dollars, though they did not affect the financial center of Mumbai and the global outsourcing powerhouses of Bangalore and Hyderabad in the south. Like many, the group demanded a widespread reform of India's power sector, which has been unable to keep up with the soaring demand for electricity as the economy expanded and Indians grew more affluent and energy hungry.

"India has outgrown its own infrastructure," said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, a strategist at SMC Global Securities.

India's Central Electricity Authority reported power deficits of more than 8 percent in recent months, and many economists said the power deficit is dragging down India's economy.

"Without power we cannot run an economy at 8 percent, 9 percent growth or whatever your ambition is," Chakraborty said.

Part of the problem is that India relies on coal for more than half its power generation and the coal supply is controlled by a near state monopoly that is widely considered a shambles.

A recent survey showed nearly all the coal-fueled plants had less than seven days of coal stock, a critical level, said Chakraborty, and many of the country's power plants were running below capacity. Government bureaucracy has made it difficult to bring more plants online.

In addition, vast amounts of power bleeds out of India's antiquated distribution system or is pirated through unauthorized wiring. Farmers, with a guarantee of free electricity that is driving many state electric boards to bankruptcy, have no incentive to conserve energy.

The power deficit was worsened this year by a weak monsoon that lowered hydroelectric generation, spurred farmers to use pumps to irrigate their fields long after the rains would normally have come and kept temperatures higher, keeping air conditioners and fans running longer.

The opposition said officials should have located the first fault and fixed it before getting the whole system back on line Monday.

"The power minister owes an answer to the prime minister, owes an answer to the nation why this is happening," Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.

Instead, as part of a planned Cabinet shuffle, Shinde was promoted in the middle of the day to the powerful job of home minister, putting him in charge of the nation's internal security even as the power crisis dragged on.

By contrast, the power chief in the state of Uttar Pradesh was summarily fired by his chief minister Monday for his handling of the first power crisis.

INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

I see a lot of suggestions to use invertors but generally the best solution is to have the correct 12 volt travel adapter for your unit. This will reduce the power losses that will be caused by changing the voltage from 12 vdc to 110vac then most often back to 12 vdc. (sorry if you have an S9 like I do then you still need either the invertor or one of the S9 car adapter brick$$)

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

Dear all, I am somewhat new to the subject area. I have a small optional power source in the form of a 12 volt Battery which I directly hook whenever required. I use Devilbiss Intellipap Autoadjust. I would appreciate anybody enlightening me whether I can keep my 12 volt cable from the battery switched on while PAP is running on AC power without injuring my friend: the machine. I do not have an inverter.

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

(08-03-2012 11:44 PM)pbharati2011 Wrote: Dear all, I am somewhat new to the subject area. I have a small optional power source in the form of a 12 volt Battery which I directly hook whenever required. I use Devilbiss Intellipap Autoadjust. I would appreciate anybody enlightening me whether I can keep my 12 volt cable from the battery switched on while PAP is running on AC power without injuring my friend: the machine. I do not have an inverter.

I would think that it would be possible but you would have to make up a connector with diodes to prevent back feed of power into the adapter when running on the battery and preventing charging of the battery by the adapter. The better solution would be to build a 12 volt charging system for the battery that can handle both charging and the power requirements of the PAP and running on that system full time. That way you would not have to get up and switch over in a power failure.

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

(07-31-2012 05:41 PM)SuperSleeper Wrote:

Quote:620 million without power in India after 3 power grids fail

"The power minister owes an answer to the prime minister, owes an answer to the nation why this is happening," Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.

Instead, as part of a planned Cabinet shuffle, Shinde was promoted in the middle of the day to the powerful job of home minister, putting him in charge of the nation's internal security even as the power crisis dragged on.

By contrast, the power chief in the state of Uttar Pradesh was summarily fired by his chief minister Monday for his handling of the first power crisis.

Okay, now this is the best part of the article! If the governmental official is completely incompetent, promote them! It just kinda sums it all up! Oh and I'm not picking on India, all governments seem to operate the same way!

As always, YMMV! You do not have to agree or disagree, I am not a professional so my mental meanderings are simply recollections of things from my own life.

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

Dear oldteddybear, Thanks for the input. I followed your second suggestion and found that the humidifier system was not working. The screen showed, 'Heat : ****'. It was only cold air that was blasted.

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

(08-07-2012 10:30 PM)Cobra4x4 Wrote: It was relatively inexpensive and will last all night with the humidifier & climateline hose attached. I'm certain it can last more than 1 day.
When the power goes out I don't even know it.

The best feature of this UPS (For me of course) is the ability to cancel or mute the "On battery" alarm.

Why mess around with automotive batteries (which can release noxious fumes) and power inverters when you can get a neat and tidy UPS which requires no special cables or adapters.

The UPS you link to on that manufacturer's website cannot possibly power your CPAP machine for 8 hours. Have you actually tried to go all night long with your CPAP on UPS power alone (unplugged)? Most home-computer UPS units like this have nowhere near the battery capacity to be able to power a CPAP with heated humidifier for 8 hours.

For instance, your S9 AutoSet has a typical power consumption on 110v AC of 70 watts - and possibly more than that if you use the Climateline hose and turn the heated humidifier all the way up. The UPS you refer to on that manufacturer website has a power chart on it... looking at the curve, at an 80 watt draw, the UPS will only last 100 minutes roughly before shutting down (not even 2 hours). If you extrapolate the run-time curve out to 70 watts, you might get 2.5 hours of run-time (if you're lucky).

If you're relying on these home-type UPS units to power your CPAP needs in case of a power outage, you're going to be in for a rude awakening about 2-3 hours after the power goes out. Definitely not a long-term solution and not even a good overnight solution.

This is why folks use marine-type deep cycle batteries with higher amp-hour ratings - if standard home UPS units could do the job, more people would be using them for this purpose.

INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.

My S9 at a pressure of 18 and humidifier on 5 draws about 30 watts. I'd get about 4 hours. Your mileage may vary.

(08-07-2012 10:30 PM)Cobra4x4 Wrote: Why mess around with automotive batteries (which can release noxious fumes) and power inverters when you can get a neat and tidy UPS which requires no special cables or adapters.

Automotive batteries do NOT produce noxious fumes, just hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is harmless unless you get enough to explode, which is almost impossible to do unless you tightly seal it up in something like Tupperware. You have to pump a lot of charging current into the battery to electrolyze the water and get significant quantities of hydrogen. You simply can't produce it fast enough to matter in this size of battery. You can cause problems in things like big forklifts or large backup power systems.

Don't open the filler caps and check the water level with a match, though. There may be hydrogen in the small air space above the water inside the battery.

As far as toxicity, hydrogen is entirely non-toxic. The only way to cause a problem is to produce enough hydrogen to displace a significant portion of the oxygen in the room. In a battery, you will produce oxygen at the same time as you produce hydrogen, so that can't happen either.

The sealed battery in the UPS produces the exact same chemicals as a car battery if you charge it wrong, and will vent them in to the atmosphere if you produce enough of them to matter. The chemistry of a sealed lead acid battery is the same as a normal car battery other than having a pressure seal and a hydrogen recombiner that will handle hydrogen generated at very slow rates.

Get the free SleepyHead software here. Useful links.
Click here for information on the main alternative to CPAP.
If it's midnight and a DME tells you it's dark outside, go and check it yourself.

RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
August 6, 2012

Two major blackouts last week left hundreds of millions of Indians in the dark. PM contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds says despite its advanced grid, the U.S. needs major improvements in infrastructure and preparedness to be ready for a major power loss.

Last week, India suffered two huge blackouts. Tuesday’s cut power to 370 million people; another one on Wednesday blacked out 670 million people, making it the worst blackout in the history of humanity.

Talking about this with a colleague, I said, "Don’t worry. That can’t happen here." "Why not?" she asked. "Because we don’t have 670 million people," I replied.

This wasn’t the comfort she was looking for.

The specific causes of India’s blackouts aren’t likely to be a problem in the United States. India’s electrical grid was brought down in part by state governments drawing more power from the grid than they were supposed to; American power grids are better managed. And while India’s grid has been strained by rapid economic growth, America currently faces no such problem.

But don’t get too comfortable. America’s grid has its own problems, and not enough is being done to address them. And, ironically, because American electric supplies have generally been pretty reliable, we’re in some ways worse-equipped to handle a major power outage than India is. That’s also something we should probably be doing something about, both at the national level and as individuals.

Modern civilization is astoundingly dependent on electricity. If the power goes out for very long, pretty much everything stops: water (you need pumps), gasoline (most gas stations don’t have backup generators to pump the gas), traffic (no stoplights), sewage (pumps again), and, eventually, even things like natural gas supplies (more pumps) and cellphone service (cell towers usually have backup power, but for most it’s only short-term). Stop the electricity for a day and it’s inconvenient; stop it for a few days and people die; stop it for a week or more over a big area and civilization itself is in peril.

The more advanced state of the U.S. grid is a mixed blessing. The ability to "wheel" power over long distances means that local problems can be ameliorated by power from elsewhere. But it also means that a failure in one area can, under the wrong circumstances, bring down service over wide areas. Modern smart-grid technologies currently being designed and deployed can make the power net nimbler and able to adapt more quickly to changes in loads. On the other hand, all that computerization makes the system more vulnerable to software bugs, viruses, cyber attacks, or even electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) damage from a solar storm or a nuclear attack.

Even worse: Americans aren’t as prepared for power outages as Indians are. In India—or Nigeria, where I have family—no one is surprised when the power goes out. As a result, everyone has a backup plan. Blackouts are so common that dealing with them isn’t really a backup plan at all—just part of the plan.

Here, that’s not the case. Most critical operations do have backup generators, and so do some not-so-critical ones (The law school where I teach has a gigantic Caterpillar diesel generator, even though an interruption in law teaching probably wouldn’t threaten the well-being of the community.) But coverage is surprisingly spotty. Some cellular carriers equip their cells with backup generators, but others don’t—and the industry successfully fought to kill an FCC requirement for backup power. Most gas stations don’t have backup generators, which means that in an extended power outage, the gas in your car’s tank (or in the cans for your gas-powered generator at home) is all the gas you’re going to have. So when extended blackouts hit, things are worse in the U.S., as people discovered recently when millions in the Washington, D.C., area were without power for days.

That means two things: First, we have to do what we can to harden our infrastructure to make the threat of blackouts less likely. Second, we should be prepared for the worst.

On the infrastructure-hardening front, approaches range from the obvious, like burying power lines likely to be brought down by storms and making sure there’s enough generating capacity to meet peak loads, to the less obvious, like ensuring that there are adequate stocks of important components (like transformers) to do disaster recovery. Keeping those stocks is hard, because the parts are expensive and nowadays often imported from overseas. Earlier this year, for example, power industry and Homeland Security engineers practiced bringing in and installing three "recovery transformers" in a test to see how quickly they could replace the big transformers found at power substations in an emergency.

The experiment was troubling: Although engineers have the technical skills to do the job, the transformers often have a two-year order horizon. The substation transformers are so big that they have to be shipped by rail, and to make things worse, rail no longer serves many areas where existing substations are found. So the U.S. is having to pursue alternative means: The "recovery" transformers split the task of one unit into three smaller ones that are easier to move. They’re also developing transformers that work in multiple applications, to reduce the number of different models that will have to be kept in stock.

Right now, if more than a few transformers were knocked out at once, the affected areas could be left without service for months or even years. These current efforts will reduce the time to recovery, but only if the U.S. begins maintaining sufficient stockpiles. That’s only the beginning: Other issues involve securing power-control and other utility hardware against hackers (current security is often embarrassingly poor) and the physical security of control centers and key components against sabotage or accident. Addressing these issues is important, because a major grid-down incident lasting weeks or months wouldn’t just be an inconvenience. It would be a catastrophe.

Stopping the power from going out should be our first priority, but it’s also smart to prepare for a "soft landing" when blackouts do happen. Here there should be two priorities: first, systems that fail gracefully rather than catastrophically; second, long-term backup power for critical systems.

Fortunately, failing gracefully is usually comparatively cheap. Battery backups for traffic lights may keep them going for only a few hours, but those few hours let people get home and off the roads where immediate failure might produce gridlock. Backups for mass-transit systems let people get off the train at a station instead of being stuck somewhere underground. Even a few hours of battery backup for cellphone service lets people respond to the outage and make plans with their loved ones and co-workers. (For families and businesses, having some sort of plan in advance is even better, of course).

For critical systems, the backup power needs to be robust and long-lasting. I’m talking about hospitals, phone/Internet providers, power plants (which need their own backup power to do the repairs), other utility companies, police, public-health facilities, and more. Many facilities with emergency generators rely on natural gas for power. That’s fine as long as the gas is working, but the gas company needs power to run its distribution systems. Many other generators have diesel or propane tanks, but those are often intended only for short-term use, with supplies adequate for only a few days. For the more important systems, we need to be thinking about longer time horizons and about ways to refuel them if they’re needed for even longer. You want the water and sewage systems to keep working even if the lights are out.

Where do people get food if the grocery stores don’t have power? For outages of a few days, this is a nuisance; for longer ones, it becomes a serious problem. Communities should have plans set up in advance.

So should individuals. At the low end of individual preparation, inexpensive solar/hand-crank radios provide information and usually will power an LED light and charge a cellphone. Stepping up, auto inverters or small generators can provide useful backup power for a few days. If you’re really serious, you can always put in a whole-house backup generator and power it from a buried propane or diesel tank that will last for days or weeks, though that becomes pretty pricey. Likewise, you want to be prepared to get by for a while if it’s hard to get food, water, vital medications, or other supplies.

Defense against blackouts and other dropouts in crucial infrastructure is best done in layers. On some of these, we can learn from India; on others, we will have to think for ourselves. Better that we do so sooner than later.

INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.

INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.